Medium – Lisa Grocott
“You’ve seen these articles — they might hold empathy in the highest regard, position emotional intelligence as core to great leadership, or herald grit as the ultimate “key to success.” These attributes are distinct from domain-specific academic skills. The x-factor skill is always a way of existing in the world that defines our social interactions and shapes our mindset. Mounting evidence asserts the correlation between these skills and our capacity to professionally and personally thrive. To privilege the learning of these skills would be to totally upend the way we prioritize curricular content. Exciting, heady work for sure — but beyond the humble ambitions of this post. All I want to do here is see if we can agree on a term for this kind of learning. The default name we resort to is soft skills. But the way people use air-quotes and cringe when saying “soft skills” raises the question of whether anyone thinks this term will ever underscore the importance of the dispositions at the heart of youth development.”(more)